By now you’re likely aware that John Lincoln, CEO of Ignite Visibility, has written, produced, directed and narrated SEO: The Movie, which is available for viewing now at https://ignitevisibility.com/seo-movie/

The movie, told by industry pioneers Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Jill Whalen, Brett Tabke, Rae Hoffman and Barry Schwartz, covers the early days of SEO when people were “spammin and jamming,” affiliates vs. main stream, black hat vs. white hat, the unique and often rocky stories of the industry’s pioneers, how Matt Cutts changed the industry, the history of Google updates and even has commentary on the future of SEO from the industry’s top minds. SEO: The Movie also lists industry all-stars such as John Muller, Maile Ohye, Aleyda Solis, Cindy Krum, Will Reynolds, Brian Dean, Michael King, Bruce Clay, Loren Baker, Eric Ward, Cyrus Shepard, Bill Slawski, Garry Grant, Chris Sherman, Jim Boykin, Shawn Hogan, Mike Graham, Eric Enge and more! SEO: The Movie also features some of the top software providers in the industry such as Moz, SEM Rush, Conductor, Spy Fu, Rio SEO, Ahrefs, Majestic and more.

Eric’s note: All of the above is great, but let’s cut to the chase. Your own LinkMoses appears during the credit roll. You can see John’s edited version of my rant at the above URL, starting at the 40:01 mark. If you want to see my my full rant uncut, here it is below.

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]]>The Ten Commandments of Link Buildinghttp://www.ericward.com/articles/ten.html
Fri, 02 Jun 2017 14:00:00 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?page_id=705At what point does a link-building tactic make the leap from acceptable to not? When does white hat become black hat? Or gray hat? Or pink?

Ten Commandments of Link Building

(updated May 2017)

I – Linkest not just to seek favor from Google*(*If your site’s success is dependeth on Google alone, it shall destroy you, or worse, be featured in the Knowledge Graph without attribution. The irony…)

II – Those who link in exchange for gold are link whores*
*Caveats:
a) Linking in exchange for return link is sometimes kind of slutty
b) Philosophically, LinkMoses agrees that all links are paid in one form or another, but this discussion gives LinkMoses a headache and he wanders the desert pondering this conundrum, which my clients do not appreciate.
c). Offering discounts to students via links on .edu domains. So you think you’re clever. You think you’re not leaving a sandal print the engines can spot? Fools, all of ye. I recently saw an edu discount for paternity testing kits. Demographically relevant? Sure, but slimy. If you’re in college and need a paternity testing kit, saving 10% on it is the least of your worries.III – Thou shalt not link to thine own site from 367 different social media profiles. And don’t get me started on link wheels.

IIIb – Thou shalt not take advantage of Google’s current love-fest with Pinterest (look who ranks top 10 for How to Build Links with Infographics even though LinkMoses has never created one and hasn’t updated that Pinterest page in years), nor will thee send an email to all employees telling them to Plus the corporate homepage.

*Caveats
a) It is completely acceptable to include a couple of those cute little share, tweet, etc., buttons on your own content. They work nicely. Here, try this one: Tweet This Now
b). If you seed YELP with fake reviews, a swarm of locusts will follow you to the next SMX conference, or worse, you might get sued.IV – If thou beginest thy link request email “To whometh, it may concern”, it shall hastily be deleteth

IVb – Please stop sending emails to LinkMoses that begin: “I just came across your site“. No, you didn’t. Lying to LinkMoses has dire consequences. I know a guy…

V- Thou shalt not refer to thine content as “link bait”, any more than thou shall refer to your site’s users as “Carp”. It’s insulting to both sides.VI – Thou shalt study and analyze, but never covet, thy neighbor’s links*
(*if thou doest covet them, please limit your desires to highest trust TLDs, and remember that mimicking competitor links is wise, but should never be the core of your overall strategy. And just to be clear, extra shame is reserved for those who volunteer to be webmaster at child’s school and then secretly add anchor text links back to your company site.VII – Thou shalt never use the name Matt Cutts (or anyone who works on the Google spam team) in vain*
(*at least not where it can be crawled, and be careful with javascript and flash, they can read it now)VIII – Just because you thinketh bing search is stupideth does not giveth thee permission to link spameth them

VIIIb – If you do so under the guise of “testing“, it’s not a formal violation of this commandment.

IX – If thou has truly reformeth, beg forgiveness via the reconsideration formeth
(If you receive no response, do not hang thine head. Contact LinkMoses and he may be able to deliver a formal scroll documenting your heathenism so it can be cleansed in an attempt at link reformation. LinkMoses does of course charge for this as he has three children who require much Manna)X – The link schemer may eat today, but the link earner eateth from a bountiful table for a lifetimeLink and share wisely,Eric

“A mere $8 a month? That, my friends, is hilariously little money.Good solid links, with great instructions on how to get them. I’ve subscribed to Eric’s LinkMoses Private for less than 2 months and already, I’ve gotten several links out of the link building tips. Now you see why I think all of you should go and subscribe”

]]>edu Inbound Link Myths Still Confuse Marketershttp://www.ericward.com/articles/2017/05/edu-inbound-link-fallacies-updated.html
Tue, 23 May 2017 13:03:00 +0000http://www.ericward.com/uncategorized/updated-edu-inbound-link-fallacies.html(updated May 23, 2017) One of the never-ending link building myths is the impact that inbound links originating from .edu domains can have on your search rankings. Lost in the discussion is that the quality of IBL’s from within the .edu domain varies significantly. [Note: If you like this post make sure to also check out […]

(updated May 23, 2017)
One of the never-ending link building myths is the impact that inbound links originating from .edu domains can have on your search rankings. Lost in the discussion is that the quality of IBL’s from within the .edu domain varies significantly.

Rather than making this concept more complex than it needs to be, let’s boil it down by example. A link from a student homepage or school paper web site isn’t as valuable as a link from a professor’s page, or better yet, the University library site. Why? because it’s easy to buy links from student newspapers, whereas a librarian isn’t going to be bought. Thus the content EARNED the link, and the source and citation can be trusted…(article continues below)

[Eric’s Note: I continue to update this article as it appears people continue to be as in love with .edu based link targets today as they were years ago. I base this on several inquiries I received, the last one of which I’ve included below]

Dear Mr. Ward,

We are a manufacturer and seller of high end playgound equipment designed for municipalities. Our site is http://xxxxxxxx. We would be very interested in a quote from you for the following…

– obtaining 100 .edu based inbound links

/snip

Fact or Fiction?

Would it be possible for a manufacturer of playground equipment designed for municipalities to earn .edu inbound links? Maybe. It would take some long term strategic content decisions. Or, some short term scholarships, internships, sponsorships, contests (at schools that offer degrees in planning/recreation) and other clever angles of entry.

The larger question here is would it make sense for them from a business perspective? That’s not as easy to answer. There are no guarantees that .edu links are going to help your rank, and I’ve seen MANY situations where they didn’t. This is not a “links as commodity” scenario. For this to make sense from a business perspective the company would need to develop a deeper relationship with the University, not just view them as a domain to get a link from. Need an example? Here’s one [ http://capla.arizona.edu/planning-program ]. Don’t see an obvious link opportunity? EXACTLY. This is where you start. You build a relationship. You offer internships. You provide faculty with opportunities to talk about urban planning and recreation. You host those interviews on your site. Are you seeing a trend yet? This is business development 101 folks.

In today’s world where the lines between offline and online are more blurred than ever, business development often results in not just business, but links. I’ve said it a million times. The less you worry about the link and the more you focus on creating a relationship, the more likely you are to end up with the exact type of linking footprint that resonates with algorithms.

Geographic Inbound Link Variety

Another linking topic that gets folks excited is geographic IBL variety. This is another way of saying you need links from a bunch of countries. Not true. Links from around the world may not matter one bit for your particular site. Why would a Nebraska hockey store need links from Australia? But I STILL see this type of linking all the time, which means comapnies are still buying linking services from link building firms that are selling complete crap.

More fallacy regarding directory inclusion

Just because I can tell you exactly which links will help you rank higher doesn’t mean you can get those links. You have to earn them via meritorious content.

I can say with complete certainty that the older the site the more useless those directory IBLs are. I rank 1st or 2nd for the exact terms I care about the most, and my site is listed in only two directories. Why do I rank? Simple. Because a). I never went after rank, and B). I stayed true to my content and expertise. That said, since I do rank high I can reverse analyze my links and learn why, but just because I can tell you which links will help you rank high doesn’t mean you can get those links. You have to earn them via meritorious content.

For a newer site, the game changes. A new site’s IBL profile/footprint/transcript/signature needs to slowly percolate towards becoming something that looks natural and trustworthy. I see evidence every day that the links that help me rank 1st will not help every site site rank 1st.

So what works for one site WILL NOT work for every site, which is why it’s such a challenge to create software/tools that can analyze links with any degree of confidence. In the end, a human still has to make some very tricky decisions about whether or not ANY link is worth pursuing. The answer will be different for every site, and your motivation for pursuing any link target needs change. It’s not about links s a commodity anymoe, even tighter focused commodities as opposed to rampant spam. Today it about Bizdev, publicity, goodwill, giving not taking, participating, engaging, and creating.

]]>Backlink Research Best Practiceshttp://www.ericward.com/articles/2017/05/backlink-research-best-practices-linkscape.html
Wed, 17 May 2017 06:00:00 +0000http://www.ericward.com/uncategorized/backlink-research-best-practices-linkscape.html(Originally published May 8, 2008, updated 12/2009 and 5/2017) My silence regarding 3rd party linking analysis tools has been mistaken by several people as meaning I don’t like them. Quite the contrary. I do like them, and I’ll post here what I’ve published on a few other blogs, almost verbatim. Over the years I have lost […]

My silence regarding 3rd party linking analysis tools has been mistaken by several people as meaning I don’t like them. Quite the contrary. I do like them, and I’ll post here what I’ve published on a few other blogs, almost verbatim.

Over the years I have lost count of the 3rd party link building and link analysis tools and software I’ve tried out, many of which are long gone. What is most telling to me is that I abandon them when it comes time for heavy lifting deep vertical link target ID and evaluation. I won’t go so far as to say “All you need is Google and your brain,” but it’s close to being true, at least for the type of client content I work with. I commend Rand for it, and I will use it to augment my approach to the link building research process when I feel it will help me.

The savviest link builders know how and when to use tools and when to get down and dirty with Google advanced search operators

On the other hand, I’ve never been a big user of any tools other than my own privately created (and simple) scripts. As much as I want and look forward to every new instrument, I keep thinking about Rocky IV, where Ivan Drago was using every cutting edge tool and training method available, while Rocky Balboa ran around in the snow with a log on his back. The savviest link builders know how and when to use tools and logs.

Lost in all this tool talk is that it doesn’t matter how rocking your link intelligence is if you don’t have meritorious content that can earn the types of links that matter in the first place. I have my methodology to ID the exact set of targets that will allow just about any site in any vertical to rank extremely high. But this information is useless unless it is used by a truly meritorious site that also knows how to seek and get those links. No tool can finish this journey for you, and like Rocky in the snow or a marathon runner, the first part is easy. It’s the last few miles that are hard, and where the battle is won.

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]]>LinkMoses Private Video Tutorial – Vetting A Directory (7:59)http://www.ericward.com/lmp-vetting-a-directory.html
Mon, 27 Feb 2017 17:39:01 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?p=5720NOTE: Please mouse-over the video and click on the bottom right to view it in full-screen mode. In this LinkMoses Video Tutorial, Eric Ward shows the process he uses to quickly vet a niche or topical directory to determine whether or not it might make sense to pursue as a publicity or link opportunity for […]

NOTE: Please mouse-over the video and click on the bottom right to view it in full-screen mode.

In this LinkMoses Video Tutorial, Eric Ward shows the process he uses to quickly vet a niche or topical directory to determine whether or not it might make sense to pursue as a publicity or link opportunity for a particular client. In this case, we are using a legal directory for our example.

]]>Understanding Google’s Latest Assault On Unnatural Linkshttp://www.ericward.com/understanding-googles-latest-assault-unnatural-links.html
Wed, 22 Feb 2017 21:32:26 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?p=5672Understanding Google’s Latest Assault On Unnatural Links By Eric Ward on August 13, 2013 (Updated 2/22/17, originally written for SearchEngineLand) Without much fanfare or publicity, Google quietly updated the Link Schemes/Unnatural Links document inside the Webmaster Tools section of their site last month. If not for the excellent work of Barry Schwartz, many of us […]

By Eric Ward on August 13, 2013 (Updated 2/22/17, originally written for SearchEngineLand)

If not for the excellent work of Barry Schwartz, many of us would have missed it. (I have a page change tool app set up for that exact URL, and it didn’t catch it for several days.)

Since this news hit the mainstream linking/SEO community, there’s been no shortage of reporting on the changes themselves, with nearly 6,000 results for the exact match search phrase “google updates link schemes.” The Web is certainly a remarkable echo chamber, considering this news is less than three weeks old as I write.

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What is harder to find — and what I’m going to take a stab at — is further parsing the specific Google changes in a way that helps define what is and isn’t acceptable at the tactical level.

I don’t do this as a spokesperson for Google. I have no secret insider info, and I base everything that follows on experience and opinion. As I enter my 23rd year as an online marketer/content publicist, I figure I must have learned at least two or three things during that time.

Links To Manipulate PageRank
What Google Said

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

Why It’s Frustrating.

“Intended.” “May be considered.” With just 4 words, Google has left themselves plenty of wiggle room — and with good reason. The key issue for all of us is, how does one divine intent? It is quite possible to engage in a link building campaign that was not designed to manipulate PageRank but which has that exact effect — so how exactly can an algorithm know if you meant to do it on purpose?

What I Think/Tactical Response

My hunch is that the history of your inbound link profile will show whether you are purposely involved in link schemes or not.

A good metaphor here would be a college transcript. If you were a C student for three years and suddenly pulled a 4.0 your senior year, that tells a story about you as a person, at least academically. Similarly, if your site has a four-year history of backlinks from article farms, hundreds of mindless directories, and 10 different press release sites, then doesn’t that also tell a story about your site? I think so.

But no story is ever complete without a full examination of all aspects of a person (or a website). That’s why I think Google has to leave some wiggle room. The same exact anchor text press release strategy can have completely different effects for two different sites, based on their historical “link story.” The only proof I have of this are the stories from people I’ve consulted with who have used the exact same tactic and had completely different results. When I dig deeper into their backlink profiles, there’s always something there that tips me off. Something that looks a little right, or wrong.

From a tactical standpoint, you obviously should avoid pursuing links based on PageRank alone. One of my favorite questions to ask myself about ANY link I am pursuing is, “Would I want this link even if it didn’t help me rank higher?” Asked another way, “Can this link help me in ways other than just organic rank?” A larger part of your linking strategy should be the pursuit of links that fit these criteria.

Buying Or Selling Links
What Google Said

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link

Why It’s Frustrating

Your average webmaster is likely not an SEO expert and thus may not be aware of what “PageRank” is — or how it’s passed.

What I Think/Tactical Response

Again, it’s all in the interpretation. Google is pretty clear about paid links that pass PageRank. The complication lies in the fact that many webmasters don’t have a clue what PageRank is.

Case in point: I was seeking links for an aviation website and identified a state aviation association that had an outstanding and heavily curated collection of aviation resources. If you had a high caliber aviation website, you could be included for free — but they also allowed you to pay a $50 fee to have your site included in a special “Featured Sites” section.

In talking further with them, many things became apparent. They had absolutely no clue what nofollow/follow meant. The term “anchor text” was foreign to them. They weren’t experts at SEO, they were aviators — and they weren’t selling links in order to help people rank sites higher at Google.

At first I was skeptical, but the more I talked to them and the more I steered the conversation toward SEO, the more obvious it became to me that they were not aware that, from a technical standpoint, what they were doing was a violation of Google’s Quality Guidelines.

In fact, I think many of us are so tightly enmeshed in this industry that we forget how many millions of websites exist and are maintained by people who have no clue about the minutiae of Google’s guidelines. In this case, the guy running the site was a pilot, and wouldn’t know a nofollow link from a windsock.

From a tactical standpoint, you must ask yourself if the risk of obtaining any link via any form of payment outweighs the reward. If Google did not exist, and you were paying for a link, the only logical reason for doing so would be because you felt that link would send you click traffic. That should be your guide. If Matt Cutts was looking over your shoulder as you purchased the link, could you explain to him why it has nothing to do with rank and everything to do with audience relevance?

Link Exchanges
What Google Said…

Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking

Why It’s Frustrating

Once again, we’re left with some ambiguity. What precisely constitutes “excessive” in this case? And how does Google determine that an exchange is done “exclusively” for any particular purpose?

What I Think/Tactical Response

I’d like to know how Google defines “excessive” in this case. After all, there are many scenarios in which link exchanges would make absolutely perfect business sense. For example, let’s say you are a wedding planner in Atlanta, Georgia. You have partnerships with caterers, photographers, DJs, limousine companies, florists, entertainment companies, movers, cello players, harpists… even seamstresses and unicyclists, for all we know!

In what way would it not make sense for all these business websites to link to one another as a means of helping each other raise awareness of their individual companies? Forget Google, we’re talking marketing. Awareness. Click traffic.

This is what’s frustrating about ambiguous words like “excessive.” At what point should I stop partnering? How about hot air balloon companies? I’ve seen weddings that had them. What about boat charter companies, for those who want a wedding at sea? Or at a museum, or on top of a mountain?

The point here is, how does an algorithm determine that which is excessive from that which is excellent marketing? Again, is it historical linking behavior? But what if that wedding planner had been using a black hat SEO firm and for several years had been engaging in foolish linking tactics that had been detected by Google, but now was working with me on a completely different, white hat approach that was not for Google search rank, but for brand awareness and expansion? Can Google detect this? I sure hope so.

From a tactical standpoint, my suggestion is that reciprocal links can be very useful, but don’t reciprocal link with unrelated business for search rank purposes. Don’t expect Google to understand why a wedding photographer, SCUBA instructor and dulcimer player are related, even though we can likely envision a scenario where they actually are related.

Let’s say I have a client create a fantastic article/ebook designed to help hearing-impaired high school seniors understand their unique college financial aid options. I then do outreach to a few hundred high schools and pick up 75 links as a result. Is that too “large-scale”? Or is it only a problem if I am submitting to the many article databases designed just for that purpose?

Is it based on anchor text and links? Can I submit an article to 5,000 venues as long as I don’t embed a keyword rich anchor anywhere, but instead include a plain text link in my bio? I’ve written over 100 articles for Search Engine Land, and a link to my site is in the bio of every one of those pages. Is that “large-scale”?

From a tactical standpoint, my suggestion is that you avoid completely all mass/general submission venues for articles. There’s no value left there IMO. But don’t ignore the opportunities that going vertical can present, like my ebook example above.

As for guest posting, this tactic all boils down to two key questions. 1) Why are you doing it? (Search rank? Traffic?), and 2) How credible are both the guest poster and the blog on which the post will reside.

I’ve never done a guest blog post and probably won’t, but one deal-breaker for me would be if a blog is actively marketing guest blogging opportunities. The words “Blog For Us” has become a red flag for me. I’d look at the caliber of all the contributors, the topics of their content. You could write the most elegant guest post in history, but if that same blog follows up your guest post with one about cheap Canadian pharmacies, well, oops.

Automated Linking
What Google Said…

Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

Why It’s Frustrating

Do partially automated tasks count? How can Google tell?

What I Think/Tactical Response

Lastly, Google states “automated programs or services to create links.” But automated in what way? If I write 50 individual email link requests that are all 100 % personalized, and then save them in my outbox and use Thunderbird’s “Send Later” scheduler, isn’t that technically automated? Yes, but it’s not the kind of automation I believe Google is referring to.

From a tactical standpoint, my belief is there are many elements of the link seeking process that can be automated safely, and many others that cannot. Prospecting can be automated, though you should still augment it with your own research. Contact tracking and follow up is easy to automate. Identifying the proper contact person who can make a decision? That should not be automated.

Much of this is common sense. We all know when someone is playing us for a link and trying to make it look “personal.” Yet, people still try. Would you believe that in 18 years and thousands of link requests, I have never once sent an email unless I had the name of the person I was sending it to. A “Dear Webmaster,” or even “Dear Sir or Madam” is an automatic delete. Just because something can be automated does not mean it should be automated

Obvious, Or Not?

Some of what I’ve written above is definitely food for thought, but at the same time some of it seems quite obvious. But I assure you, it isn’t as obvious to many folks outside the SEO world, and that’s the overwhelming majority of site owners. They have no idea about the various monthly changes Google makes and what they mean.

Many operate solo, while some are at the mercy of an SEO shop or consultant to help them — and they’re often shocked to find out they have done something that perhaps they shouldn’t have. I know this to be so because I talk on the phone every day to people about these very topics.

Confusion is the norm. Fear. Especially for those who have been penalized and don’t know why, or who have just learned about a linking strategy and aren’t sure if it’s safe or will cost them their business.

I admit to being a Google fanboy, and I applaud Google for being more and more transparent with their guidelines. For giving people examples of bad links, for updating their Unnatural Links and Link Schemes documentation.

But even with this welcomed transparency, there is confusion, and perhaps even more confusion now than ever, based on my inbox. The devil is always in the details — in this case, in those few words sprinkled here and there that leave so much room for interpretation, and in mistakes with linking strategies. How would you define these words?

Intended

May be considered

Excessive

Exclusively

Large-scale

Widely distributed

Automated

Low-quality

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with me that Google has to leave wiggle room because there could be exceptions? What would/should those exceptions be similar to the ones I’ve mentioned above? What else could Google do to help us?

]]>Link Building Case Study – Passively Obtained Natural Backlinkshttp://www.ericward.com/articles/backlinks.html
Tue, 14 Feb 2017 17:15:00 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?page_id=661At what point does a link-building tactic make the leap from acceptable to not? When does white hat become black hat? Or gray hat? Or pink?

First, a definition. A passively-obtained natural backlink is a link given from one site to another site that the receiving site had nothing to do with obtaining. You got a link, and you didn’t know a thing about it. You didn’t ask for it, didn’t pay for it, didn’t swap for it. It just happened.

The search engines all love passive links like this. Why? Because they can be trusted.

Here’s an example (disclaimer, client). It’s circa 2003. Your site is Earthbound Farms, major grower, and seller of organic salads (note they rank#1 or #2 on any given day). Produce. Veggies. You sell your produce all over the U.S., to hundreds of stores, food chains, and specialty markets. You’ve rarely if ever ask for a link to your site, yet your site has several hundred links.

How can this be?

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Explanation 1: Many of the stores and restaurants Earthbound Farms sells organic produce to also have websites, and on their sites, they have sections like Suppliers, Vendors, or Purveyors. Here’s an example. On the Paul Martin’s American Bistro website, they have a “Purveyors” page where they list the companies they purchase products from. When those companies have websites, like Earthbound Farms does, they often provide a link to the company. Have a look. Classic passively obtained natural backlink for the organic produce company.

Explanation 2: Your company is going to attend an upcoming trade show for your industry, or maybe sponsor an event related to your industry. Trade shows have websites, and so do special events, and on those sites, there’s a section with links to the websites of all the companies that are going to attend or be sponsors. Here’s an example. Bingo, another passively obtained backlink. Side note: argue with me all day that this sponsored link was sought after and thus not natural, but in the grand scheme of links, this is about as white hat as it gets.

Search engines likely judge these types of links as being better signals of quality content on the site being linked to…

These are just a couple reasons a site might have links they didn’t actively seek. And search engines judge these types of links as being a better indication of the quality of the content on the site being linked to than the links you DO actively pursue and obtain. This makes sense to a certain point since the basic nature of the web from the early days was a massive network of passively obtained links. Back in 1993, nobody was seeking links in order to improve their search rankings, because none of the search engines looked at links. They looked on-site only.

But here’s a dirty little secret. Many links that appear to have been passively obtained are in fact actively obtained.

How do I know this? Because many of the links I mentioned for the organic produce company in “Explanation 1 above exist because I requested them. Many of the grocery websites and restaurant websites existed before the organic produce company had a site, so the grocery stores and restaurants sites couldn’t link to the organic salads site since there was nothing to link to.

But, once the organic produce company launched their website, now there was something to link to. The only catch is that most of those grocery and restaurant sites have no idea the organic produce company has launched a site, so they have to be told. Link requests have to be made.

So, what appears to be a passively obtained backlink is, in fact, an actively obtained backlink.

But all this masks two important lessons. First, these links above were earned based on merit. Earthbound Farms was not going to obtain a link from either of those sites above unless they had the goods (no pun intended) to earn the link in the first place. Every website has its own universe of inbound links it can reasonably expect to come about from a passive approach. Second, you can’t just sit back and wait for a grocer or restaurateur with a website to notice your site, remember they buy from you, and link to you.

The key is to be strategically active, rather than randomly active. Make sure you know which sites are the best targets for your link requests. If you aren’t sure, seek advice from someone you trust. Me maybe.

The goal is not to trick the engines into thinking an actively pursued link is a passive link. The goal is to make sure you obtain the merit based links your site deserves and has a natural and logical reason to obtain.

]]>Eric Ward’s Link Development Philosophy Explained in a 15 Second Videohttp://www.ericward.com/link-dev-philosophy.html
Wed, 05 Oct 2016 17:26:43 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?p=5437Eric Ward’s link development philosophy explained in 15 seconds (thanks to the awesome http://slide.ly/ this took less than 10 minutes to make). A few additional thoughts I may be in the minority since I’m happy Penguin is now baked in to Google’s algorithm. Time will tell, based on the law of unintended consequences. Some people say the new Penguin-baked-in algo […]

I may be in the minority since I’m happy Penguin is now baked in to Google’s algorithm. Time will tell, based on the law of unintended consequences. Some people say the new Penguin-baked-in algo means link spam will increase again, since “technically” there’s now no downside to link spam since there’s no algorithmic penalty to fear. But manual penalties are still alive and well, so it’s not exactly a new linking free-for-all like some people are claiming it is. Bad links can still do harm.

I’ve said it before, and it’s worth repeating. Links are not “things”. Links were never supposed to be a commodity. Links were -and remain- the online evidence of a person’s desire to curate or share something useful, funny, thought-provoking, educational, controversial, or enlightening. Links are affirmations, opinions, proofs, examples, validations.

And most importantly, links and linking related signals remain the primary way people discover content. People. I can’t stress this enough. Use your own behavior as your test lab. How many devices do you use on a daily basis to access online content? I use at least three every day; laptop, ipad, iphone. I’m not thumb-typing 45 character URLs into my phone or iPad. Nobody is. I’m still clicking with a mouse or finger tapping on a screen. And what are those things I’m clicking and tapping? Links, my friend. Links. Maybe not links in the traditional sense we used to think of links, but they are links nonetheless, and someone had to go through some type of process for those links to be there on your screen for you to click and tap.

So let’s simplify and agree that anything you can touch with your finger (or stylus) or click with a mouse, or even via voice command, if that action takes you from one piece of content to another, it is nothing more than a link.

That statement remains true today, even with the massive change in how we go online and how we use multiple tools and apps and devices to do so. Every day, regardless of what device we are using, we decide what’s useful. We decide what’s shareworthy, linkworthy, clickworthy.

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http://www.ericward.com/live-qa-eric-ward.html#respondWed, 17 Aug 2016 14:16:43 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?p=5292Ask questions below in the box that says “Leave a Reply”. During my live video Q/A’s, I’ll moderate/approve these so all attendees can see them. Use this Category Navigation List to quickly move through my site Newsletter Private Strategy Session Services Linking Articles

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]]>http://www.ericward.com/live-qa-eric-ward.html/feed0Link Building At The Speed Of Natural – Examples Of Natural Link Buildinghttp://www.ericward.com/link-building-speed-natural-examples-natural-link-building.html
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 17:57:28 +0000http://www.ericward.com/?p=5203Link Building At The Speed Of Natural – Examples Of Natural Link Building (Author note: This post is an update to a column I wrote for Search Engine Land a couple years ago) “Natural link building” has long been a sore spot (some would call it an oxymoron) among many in the online marketing community. The […]

Link Building At The Speed Of Natural – Examples Of Natural Link Building

“Natural link building” has long been a sore spot (some would call it an oxymoron) among many in the online marketing community. The general argument goes something like this:

“Any link that comes about because you pursued it cannot be considered natural” or “The very act of seeking links makes any link you obtain unnatural” or “A link is supposed to be validation that your content is of some value.”

The above arguments are all flawed, and I’ll include several examples to illustrate why later in this column.

Defining Naturalness
The “natural/not natural” argument is the link builders’ version of the larger white hat/black hat SEO argument, and it obscures many, far-more important points.

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I realize my opinion ultimately doesn’t matter, and that the fact I call myself a “natural linking strategist” could make me a liar, a hypocrite, clueless, or some combination thereof. But, there’s more at stake here than opinion and semantics. Fortunes are being won and lost based on an algorithm that we are told wants to find “naturalness” among the signals it discovers across the vast sea of code that its bots canvass every day, week, month and year. (After year!)

I believe that the best natural link builders are those who understand how to manually speed up the process that slowly happens every day on it’s own.

The algorithm adjusts, continually seeking to improve its ability to identify that which cannot be trusted among that which can be. Marketers devise techniques and tactics to try to appear natural. Some succeed; some fail. The algorithms adjust again.

It’s a cycle that repeats, with the machines getting smarter over the long-term even if sometimes during the short-term they get it completely wrong. (Weren’t those live tweets in the Google results fun? You could drop an F-bomb for the world to see instantly.) Google specifically mentions “natural” in its guidelines, so it’s a safe bet that part of Google’s algorithm is devoted to spotting signals of naturalness.

Natural Linking Strategist is not my title as much as it is an ethos — guiding beliefs that characterize an ideology. I know I just went all LinkMoses, but I’m prone to do that because I’m passionate about what I do and even more passionate about how I go about doing it.

Speeding Up NaturalnessAt the core of why I think you can build links and call them natural is a question I ask myself about every link I pursue. That question is:

What would happen if all content was known to all people?

There are many answers, but the one which is most important to link builders is this:

Certain people would link to certain content that they wouldn’t have linked to before because they didn’t know it existed. After all, you can’t link to that which you are not aware of.

I believe that the best natural link builders are those who understand how to manually speed up the process that slowly happens every day on it’s own. People learn about new content, and they link to it. Or they share it.

Even The Most Dilligent Expert/Curator Cannot Keep Up
The challenge is that the Web is so incredibly large and growing so fast that even someone who is an absolute expert in a given subject cannot possibly keep up with all the content that is related to that subject.

This is where the natural link builders find their sweet spot.

This is where I have lived for 21 years now, helping speed a linking process that could happen naturally if allowed to, but perhaps not in our lifetimes because no matter how hard we try, we will never identify all the best content in a topic.

Not Just A Hypothesis
I have a son who’s hearing impaired. I spend hours combing the web looking for content, papers, research, advice, ideas, analysis, and any other resource I can find that will help me to help my son. But no matter how much time I spend looking for these resources, I still find more. It’s a never ending sea of fantastic content and I’d welcome anyone telling me about about another resource I hadn’t heard of yet. But…Wouldn’t that then be unnatural? By the letter of the law, yes, but tell that to my son, or Google. Naturalness can happen in many ways.

Fruit Flies With Keyboards
The Web is forever, while those of us in charge of its URLs are nothing more than fruit flies with keyboards. We won’t be here for long, but the Web will. A librarian maintaining a curated list of links to Web content about volcanoes may retire (or die) before she ever discovers that amazing Pompeii animation content for teachers over on The History Channel’s website, and that would be completely natural, given that we can’t all know about every piece of content that exists.

It would also be perfectly natural for me to discover that librarian’s list of curated volcano resources and links and then contact her to introduce her to the content I just mentioned. She might just link to it — or she might not, depending on her criteria and judgment. And I believe this is natural human interaction and behavior.

If you disagree, please think back to my question: What would happen if all content was known to all people?

The answer is that she either would or wouldn’t link to the content once she found out about it. And if this doesn’t happen now, or next year, or in the next decade, it will happen. People with expertise and passion about a subject will be helped to discover the resources that they can pick and choose from for their collection.

It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing more than a corollary to the “infinite monkey theorem,” which states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Except that humans with expertise are able to discern and distinguish, whereas monkeys (and bots) cannot.

Examples Of Natural Link Building

Here are those examples of unnatural natural links that aren’t unnatural, as promised earlier:

1. .org Link — Your company is a dues-paying member of the National Poodle Fungus Association (NPFA) and has been for 22 years. The NPFA does not have a website and decides it’s about time they did. So they build one, and they choose to create a member page which lists and links to each member’s website. Given that you have been a member for 22 years, naturally, you get a link.

You wouldn’t have received the link had you not been a paying member. But isn’t that a paid link and therefore unnatural? The classic “pay to join a .org association and get a high-trust link” technique? No, it isn’t. You were a member long before the NPFA had a website. You were a member long before there was a Google. So how can any of this be unnatural?

Silly example? Absolutely. But don’t let that get in the way of the point. Links happen in more ways than can be summed up by the single word “natural.”

2. Requested Link — I send out an email to the owner of a website that is devoted to the films of Clint Eastwood. I am contacting him to let him know about a new website launched by a major movie studio that sells a new collector’s edition DVD boxed set called, “The Films of Clint Eastwood.” I ask him to include a link to the new Clint Eastwood site. He does so.

Now, even if I begrudgingly agree with you that this is an unnatural link because he linked to it only after I asked him to, here’s what happened next: the owner of that fan site devoted to the films of Clint Eastwood mentions it to a friend of his who is also a Clint Eastwood fan and runs a discussion forum and blog about Eastwood. His friend also links to the DVD site. It so happens that one of the participants on the discussion forum owns a Clint Eastwood collectibles site, and he links to it as well.

Even if I agree with you that the first scenario is an unnaturally obtained link, does that mean any links that come about from that link are also unnatural? I don’t think so.

3. .edu Link — Ed Smith is a financial planner who specializes in estate planning. He gives free seminars at the local community college once a month for people who want to learn more about estate planning. Ed has to pay a few bucks to rent a room and projector, and he run ads in the local papers inviting people to his free seminars. Ed wants clients, and these seminars are a good way for him to get new clients.

Because he is doing his seminar on a college campus, his seminar is listed on the college’s website in the upcoming events section. Within the description of his seminar, there is a link to his company’s website. This was not an “editorially earned” link. It’s a link he got because he was giving a presentation on a college campus that happened to have an online event calendar which allowed for the inclusion of URLs/links. In fact, Ed has no clue how Google works and no understanding that the link he just picked up might also help his local organic search rank. From a link building perspective, Ed is clueless. But this link is unnatural since it wasn’t editorially granted, right? I disagree.

The takeaway here is that “natural” is ultimately futile. Impossible to define. Our linking strategies should not be classified as unnatural simply because we pursued them. Your activity and actions on the Web result in further activity and actions on the Web by others. At the end of the day, building the right kind of links is simply about speeding up that which could happen naturally if all content was known to all people.

About The Author:

Eric Ward founded the Web’s first service to help introduce web content (URLs) to the online world in 1994. Eric then helped Jeff Bezos announce and publicize Amazon.com’s debut launch, and subsequently won the 1995 Award For Internet Marketing Excellence, which was the industry’s “Oscar” back then. Eric creates and has executed content linking strategies for PBS.org, WarnerBros, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The New York Times, TVGuide.com, Paramount, and Weather.com.